Speculations of Immunotherapy in COVID-19 Patients with Practical Applications During Childhood and Pregnancy

Abstract

The rapid spread of novel coronavirus disease
(COVID19) throughout the world without available
specific treatment or vaccine necessitates alternative
options to contain the disease. Historically, children
and pregnant women were considered high-risk
population of infectious diseases but rarely have been
spotlighted nowadays in the regular COVID-19
updates, may be due to low global rates of incidence,
morbidity, and mortality. However, complications did
occur in these subjects affected by COVID-19. We
aimed to explore the latest updates of
immunotherapeutic perspectives of COVID-19
patients in general population and some added details
regarding pediatric and obstetrical practice.
Immune system boosting strategy is one of the
recently emerging issues allowing the body defense
mechanism to produce virus-neutralizing antibodies to
counteract the viral impacts on multiple organ
damage. Measles vaccination (which is universally
used for children in many countries, but
contraindicated during pregnancy) could urge the
body to produce these antibodies which may apply
their effects through cross-reactivity of measles
vaccine and COVID-19 antigenic proteins. In
addition, intravenous immunoglobulin and
convalescent plasma could have such neutralizing
antibody effect leading to clinical improvement and
viral elimination. Pediatric and obstetrical experience
has appeared in previous publications.
Human monoclonal antibodies are the future
promising approach to treat and prevent COVID-19
with the use of tocilizumab in recent studies. Pediatric
data are still in progress while no pregnancy ongoing
trials are planned up to date.
The better understanding of the host antiviral response
may pave the way to develop immunotherapeutic
plans against COVID-19 in the near upcoming days.